Tanks Again!

My mental health hasn't been great lately. This means plenty of models have been bought as retail therapy and painted in my secluded underground lair so there is plenty of content for the blog. Every cloud eh?

Airfix 1/76 T-34, assembled by my uncle, painted by me. During painting I gummed up the joint so unfortunately the gun doesn't elevate any more.

The latest batch (excluding the two freshly varnished Italian vehicles sitting next to my laptop) is headed by an old Airfix T34-85 assembled by my dear Uncle in his youth. I must say that his skills far exceed what I could do at his age, especially as he was able (possibly with assistance from the Grandparents) to fit the airfix tracks on, a nearly impossible feat. Thank goodness for the modern convention of casting them in one piece with the wheels so the torture of wrestling them in place is avoided.

Airfix 1/76 scale T-34/85 compared with 1/72 Armourfast T34/76 (the main difference is the turret). The fifth road wheel has been lost to the ravages of time.

Of course, all this Russian armour isn't really a painting priority, I've been doing it because one-colour paint schemes can be done quickly and without much effort. What I should be concentrating on is stuff for North Africa. I've bodged together a short campaign for Chain of Command (cribbing heavily from existing material) and hope to coerce Suzanne into helping me test it a little over Christmas and that will need models.

This time I've got a close-up picture of the Pravda school logo (from Girls und Panzer again). It shows an arrangement of geometry tools reminiscent of the famous hammer and sickle.

I've already shown the completed British and German platoons plus support, but there are still tanks, artillery (and crew) to do and I've got the Italian platoon (plus support of various kinds) to finish as well. It will be a pretty tall order to get it all finished by Christmas so I don't expect everything to be painted, especially not the half-dozen minefields that will be needed for one of the scenarios. I think I'll just lay some string down in 6" squares for that.

M3 Lee (the M3 Grant had a more bulging turret without the extra sub-turrent on top), again from my Uncle's collection, which has been sitting in the "to paint" drawer for months.

The campaign tries to replicate the first 12 hours of the 2nd battle of El-Alamein in a 200m-wide strip of the North African desert. Platoon-level rules such as chain of command aren't really the most appropriate choice to replicate a massive infantry attack over empty desert, but those are the rules and models I have so they will be used regardless.

A9 cruiser, minus the two mini-turrets for machine guns. Not used at El Alamein, but I thought it could stand in for an A15 Crusader until I realised I hadn't the time to paint it along with everything else.

The Italian platoon is currently halfway done, and no start has been made on the support elements (machine guns, light mortars, extra squads etc). Some scrub bases also exist, but, again, more need painting as well as extra road/wadi segments. Not too much terrain to add though, what with the empty desert and all.

Italian anti-tank gun (left) and rifle (right). The rifle comes with only a small pillar of sand-bags to stand on, so I extended it into a wall with left over modelling putty. Rather pleased with the results, though I do say so myself.

All this means, of course, that the non-WWII stuff has been ignored, even by this blog! (the snaps below are of models finished some weeks ago). I do have plenty of Warhammer Chaos Warriors, Battlemechs (including one with the LARGEST MOULD LINES ON EARTH), the Gunny Peegs and even the Lord of the Rings types still in the plastic pile, but what's the betting that instead of finishing these off I'll just get some more tanks (of course I need at least two variants of the Panzer IV!).

'Mary': Knight from Bad Squiddo. I love the low-fantasy/late medieval look of the model, plus its light on details save for some armour straps and cloth under the armour. These small touches add a lot of realism to the figure without making it a chore to paint. The model comes with a shield which I have omitted as, historically, knights in plate armour generally didn't bother with them.

Of course, I can't really mention mental health without mentioning the politics that damage it. 10 years of Conservative austerity (at least, austerity for the poor) have left mental health services woefully underfunded, and with benefits slashed and disabled people wrongfully declared "fit for work" frankly, there are a lot of people far worse off than me who could do with a better deal. Again, I urge readers to vote Labour in December to give the NHS and other services the money they need.

Two more BattleMechs finished off. The Hermes (left) was a recent purchase and is in House Marik colours, while the Wolverine (right) has been sitting around almost-finished for a while and I've finally got round to adding the final details.